Forwarded message:
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Oct 30 22:28 PST 1996
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 22:11:57 -0700 (MST)
From: Evan Ravitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: SUPPORT THE MAYA: BUY HUMAN BEAN COFFEE
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 8128
PLEASE SUPPORT THE MAYA:
Government by the People, a non-profit, urges you to
buy Human Bean Company coffee, weavings, videos, etc.
(We found your address in the Chiapas email lists. We'll use it only to
support the indigenous, and rarely. We'll remove you from our list on
request.)
The Human Bean Co. is now open at 218 S. Broadway in Denver! Started by
videographer Kerry Appel, winner of our local 5 de Mayo Human Rights
Award, the Human Bean is "cooperatively conducted in association with
indigenous partners in Chiapas and dedicated to putting human values
before profit values." Endorsed by Zapatista Commandante David and the
other Tzotzile commandantes.
Kerry needs now to sell 900 pounds of excelente organic coffee from the
Chiapas highlands to enable his next buying trip around Christmas. He
plans to buy several tons from 19 communities.
1-10 lbs: US $8.50/lb. (Whole beans. Specify expresso or medium roast)
10 + lbs: $5.00/lb. Introductory price only through November!
The Human Bean Co. also has weavings from 100 women in 26 communities
including tapestries, skirts, blouses, men's shirts, etc., as well as
copal (incense),T-shirts, books, posters from the International Encuentro,
music on tape and his award-winning vide os, shown twice on our local PBS
station. These include:
89.5-minute video "El Viaje del Relampago Rojo: Profits, Politics and
Zapatistas" cost $25. Ask for E-90.
29- minute video "El Ultimo Viaje del Relampago Rojo" costs $20. Ask for
E-30.
Include $4 for shipping 1 or 2 videos. (example: One of each cost $49
total.) Ask your local station to broadcast them!
The Human Bean Co. accepts personal checks or money orders. Checks over
$200 must clear before shipping. Make them to: The Human Bean Co. and send
to 218 S. Broadway, Denver CO 80209. A full catalog will be available in
the Spring.
For coffee shipping costs, etc. contact Kerry: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
(303)871-8464 (tel/fax). Tell him your zip code to help figure shipping
costs.
Please distribute this notice far and wide.
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To further support the Maya and democracy, you may use this
editorial freely, as long as it is reproduced in its entirety:
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Mayans Weave A Better World
by Evan Ravitz
"Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour/ falls from the sky a meteoric
shower/ of facts......they lie unquestioned, uncombined./ Wisdom enough to
leech us of our ill/ is daily spun; but there exists no loom/ to weave it into
fabric..."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Huntsman, What Quarry
Nowhere in the Western hemisphere is the hour darker than in the
mountains and jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, where some 23,000 Mayan
Indians right now face slow starvation or perhaps rapid helicopter attack
by the Mexican Army --US-armed and trained under the guise of the Drug
War.*
The Mayans are already famous as weavers of cloth, but -in spite of the
silence of the mass media- are becoming known as well for the loom with
which they weave their wisdom into social fabric: "la consulta", the
consultation, a discussion and vote of all the people. At their First
International Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism in
August, some 3000 supporters from 45 countries saw la consulta in action.
"La consulta" is simply the extension of traditional village direct
democratic decision-making into the larger arena. Now some 200,000
(including children!) vote on every stage of the negotiations with the
Mexican government. It is a laborious process, involving translating the
proposals into the six different Mayan languages involved (Tzeltal, Tzoltzil,
Tojolobal, Zoque, Chol and Mame), taking them by muddy trails (I've
walked them, knee-deep for miles, in the dry season) to thousands of
villages, discussing them for days or weeks, then voting by show of hands -
pencil and paper being luxuries- finally taking the results back out and
adding up the totals.
NAFTA sparked the revolt after passing Congress against the will of 2/3 of
Americans. (You can read the excellent cover story "The New Manifest
Destiny: NAFTA and oil threaten future of Chiapas Indians" from the
July 4, 1996 Boulder Weekly, on the web at
http://boulder.earthnet.net/~bweditor/070496/cover.html.)
NAFTA, a colossal failure of "representative" democracy, has thus
ironically spurred the Zapatista revolution by direct (or participatory)
democracy -just what 76% of Americans want, according to a 1987 Gallup
poll. Here we not only have pencils and paper -and literacy- but the
technology to vote by phone (tested for the US National Science Foundation
in 1974 and used by the Liberal Parties of Nova Scotia and British
Columbia to elect their leaders in 1992 and 1993) or voting by the internet.
The `net also allows anyone to publish their views. No longer does freedom
of the press belong just to those who own one!
Yet here, only half of the States allow direct democracy (referenda and
initiatives), only once a year, and only then on government proposals or
those backed by enough money to pay petitioners to collect the tens or
hundreds of thousands of signatures required. Americans as a whole have
never voted on a referendum or initiative, unless you include our "vote" for
which Elvis stamp we wanted! Voting is done mostly with `60s punch cards
and mainframe computers running proprietary software which cannot be
examined by us or even the County Clerks who run the elections. Those
who do vote wait in line on a business day to vote "between Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," -as the deaf and blind Helen Keller saw clearly. These
"representatives" all too often misrepresent us with the likes of NAFTA,
which has cost Americans some 390,000 jobs, as estimated by Ralph
Nader's Public Citizen.
When we citizens make the laws -as they have in Switzerland for 148 years,
now four times a year- and make a mistake, we have incentive to fix it: we
have to live with it. This is evolutionary. When we give most all our power
to professional politicians, and they make a mistake, they have incentive to
cover it up: their careers and egos are on the line. This is the degeneration
we see all around.
Are you tired of begging "your" representatives for mercy? Beyond the
Tweedle parties, 3rd parties, and the well-paid party animals who fear-
monger on TV, is the growing movement for real, direct, simple
government by the people. Information on its history and future, the
electronic and legal tools, the news from here, Mexico, Canada and
Switzerland and more is available on the World Wide Web at
www.vote.org or by calling (303)440-6838 or emailing me: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brought to you by the directors of the US National Science Foundation's
1974 Televote project and Boulder, Colorado's 1993 Voting by Phone ballot
initiative. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Think millennially, act now!
*Documentation on request. Contributions to fight famine in Chiapas can
be made to: Chiapas Coalition, 3554 Marion St., Denver CO 80205.
Contact Antonia Anthony at 296-9480 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can
also support the Mayans by buying coffee, weavings, videos, etc. from the
new Human Bean Co., 218 S. Broadway, Denver CO 80209. Contact Kerry
Appel at (303) 871-9464 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Accept no inhuman beans!
Evan Ravitz lived in Chiapas and Guatemala for 3 years and explored
them by car, train, bus, foot, bike and log raft. In 1989 he
abandoned the tiny house he was building on a Mayan artist's land
in Guatemala after 3 other Mayan friends were murdered by the
government using US M-16s. On returning to the US, he noticed a poll
showing 65% of Americans wanted to end military "aid" to Central
America, and started the Voting by Phone Foundation (since renamed
Government by the People) so that we will have that vote -and many
others. He observed the first round of negotiations in Chiapas in
February 1994.
